Last Rights

We've walked together down this winding road,
In search of something true. Together we grew.

But now our journey has come to an end,
And it's on to something new. For me and you.

So goodbye, my friend.
Until we meet again,
Some other day.
I know so much will change.
But looking back I can say,
I wouldn't change a day.
I hope you can say, I hope you can say
The same.

So many memories, we got to make,
The challenges we met, I'll never forget.

'cause those lessons made us who we are today,
Now we're taking the next step. Without a regret.
No regret.
— Hoobastank, "Say the Same"

War. War never changes.

Doesn't matter if you're a Dakhuri warlord trying to keep his territory from being overrun by Bajora, an American general battling the Russians in World War II, or a Starfleet officer trying to block the Klingons' ethnic cleansing in the Hromi Cluster, there's one single constant: If you want it back in anything resembling the state it started, you need boots on the ground. You can bomb it, you can strafe it, you can cover it with poison, you can turn it into glass, but you don't own it unless your army's on it and the other guy's isn't. They've been trying to obviate the need for ground forces for centuries, but they've never succeeded. Even in an era of starships that can glass entire planets, trench warfare is still trench warfare. It's hard, dirty, noisy, and bloody.

Very bloody. Especially when the guy next to you takes a fragment of a Vaadwaur shell square in the chest.

Senior Chief Athezra flies backwards, screaming as something warm and wet spatters the side of my face. A particularly vile Kendran oath drops from my lips as I sight seven hundred thirty meters downrange on the Vaad field gun starting to roll back into its cover and squeeze, and a lance of searing light jumps the distance and the gunner's head vanishes in a gout of gore. Another shot, this one to the ammo pack, and a fireball leaps skyward.

I drop back into the trench and yell for a medic as I dash over to Athezra. I unbuckle his chestplate and—Oh, not good. I can see four ribs skewering out of his uniform and blood is bubbling out of his mouth and his chest. "Cap," he wheezes. "How bad?"

"Just a flesh wound! Where's that damned medic!" I hammer my combadge. "Kanril to Bajor! I need an emergency beam-out!"

"Captain, can't!" Tess answers. "We're taking heavy fire! Engaged with five Vaad frig—HA! TAKE THAT YOU BASTARD SON OF A—"

I stop listening. As Tess whoops with joy Athezra gasps once and stills.

"No! Dammit, no! Don't you dare die on me!" I press my hand to the side of his neck. "Oh, you phekk'ta died on me." I hit my combadge and scream, "Kanril to Lincoln, where the phekk is our air support?!"

"Klingon fighters headed your way!" Captain Ldone's voice answers. "Thirty seconds!"

Now I faintly hear the rumble of thrusters in atmo behind us. What the phekk took them so long? Damn Klinks, they're never on time. "All right," I say to what's left of my bodyguarding squad, "We gotta get rid of those minigun nests and the howitzers behind them or we'll be shredded crossing. Cover me!" I fiddle with a few settings on my rifle and take aim at the pillbox at the peak of the earthworks. Too far for my battle rifle to do anything but I can still paint it. Three To'Duj-class fighters roar overhead and the leader looses a torpedo at near point-blank range, blowing a huge crater into the earthwork. Klinks can't aim either, it seems, but it doesn't matter this time: the ground caves in under the pillbox and it falls off the hillside, pancaking a field gun that had the misfortune to pop from cover at that moment.

The medic finally arrives but I wave him off as he tries to check me. "Blood's not mine. You're too late."

The fighters come around for another pass and keep firing. Two missiles, probably shoulder-fired tubes, arc out of the trench and slam into the leader's shields. A third punches through and the ship vanishes in a fireball and a thunderclap washes across us. No ejection.

"Captain, Tess!" my combadge crackles. "We can drop shields for ten seconds!"

"Don't bother, Athezra's dead."

"Then we'll use the window to land the heavies! Beginning transport!"

There's an electrical whine behind me and ten T-204 Hayes main battle tanks materialize. It's the first time I've seen them in action. Impressive machines, ten meters long, four meters wide, and weighing twenty-four metric tons, bigger, but lighter and more elegant than the Cardassian models used by the Bajoran Militia. Dual Type V phasers on the sponsons, a 120mm smoothbore coilgun and Type IV phaser assault minigun on the turret. It's powered by a miniature fusion reactor like the Type-10 shuttle, more efficient and easier to maintain than a spider tank or a mech like the Vaads and Voth use, and it'll put a bunker-buster through eight meters of ferrocrete.

Exactly what we need.

I hit my combadge again. "Kanril to all section leaders. Our armor's on the ground. We're going over the top. Artillery, cover fire in thirty seconds."

Starfleet, Klingons, and Kobali rush towards the enemy lines, the Klingons singing some off-key war hymn, the Feds yelling orders and encouragement, the Kobali moving in utter silence.

The thing I hate most about surface warfare? It's the smell. I've showered twice and I still can't get that awful stench of earth, smoke, fuel, blood, ozone, and sh*t out of my nostrils.

The casualty lists aren't helping. Fifteen dead and wounded from the Bajor, almost a quarter of our entire Security division. Over a hundred other casualties on my ship from the space fight. Two thousand Starfleet infantry killed. One tank disabled, another's crew pulped by an AP shell through the cabin. The Shi'Kahr-class Johannesburg and Obsidian, the Tempest-class Enoch, the Vesta-class Palatine, the Stargazer-class Spock, all destroyed in the orbital battle. And that's just Starfleet.

But we won. The Vaads fought to the last man on the ground, Benthan reinforcements helped us drive off their ships in space.

I hope to the Prophets this stupid rock was worth it.

I look up from the patient I'm checking on to see Warragul standing across from me looking exhausted. The infirmary's overflowing with casualties and it's been all hands on deck, anyone on the crew with medical experience, even just basic field medicine like I learned in boot camp, for hours. I can't do surgery but I can check and change IV fluids and bandages, run a dermal regenerator, and use a hypospray.

I press a calming palm to the forehead of an injured Bajoran from Security, Petty Officer Chan Salris from Perikian Province. He's got a sucking chest wound and he lost three fingers, but he's stable and awake, if loopy from the cocktail of drugs in his system.

"Sir! Admiral on deck!" somebody hollers. Along with anyone in the room who can still stand, I spin and snap to attention at the sight of a severe-looking chocolate-skinned Vulcan one-star with a buzz-cut.

"As you were," Rear Admiral Tuvok says without preamble. "My condolences on your losses, Captain."

"They knew what they were signing up for, sir," I answer, more bitterly than I intended. "We won. Isn't that the important thing?"

Tuvok drops the subject. "When was the last time you ate?" I don't answer. Hell, I don't even remember. He steps over to the nearest replicator. "A tray of coffee and hasperat."

I smile gratefully as he holds the tray in my direction, grabbing a hasperat and a mug off it. I practically pour the entire mug straight into my mouth. "Um, Admiral. I never properly apologized for what I said to you back at the Jenolan conference."

"Allowing my emotional response to your statements to color my opinion of you as an officer would be illogical, Captain."

"Thanks. I think."

A bulky purple-skinned humanoid steps into sickbay. It's that Kobali general Q'Nel. A Kobali casualty, used to be a Talaxian, sits up in his bed and salutes. Corpsman Watkins pushes him back against his pillow with her good arm; the other's in a sling from where she took one in the shoulder pulling a gut-shot Klingon into a crater.

I twitch involuntarily at the sight of him. There's this air the zombies have about them that rubs me wrong. You can ignore it when you're fighting but it's always there. "Admiral, what's he doing here?"

"The Kobali have requested the rights to some of our dead."

"They—what?"

"As you know, they can only grow their numbers by reanimating corpses, and the process does not work on those who are already Kobali."

"I have looked over your casualty lists, Captain," the general adds. "These are the bodies we wish to—"

"No," Warragul interrupts.

"What?"

"No, you are not doing this. I will not disrespect the sacrifices our people made to save you from a war you started."

"Lieutenant?" I warn him.

"Disrespect? I wish to honor their sacrifices."

"Sir, is there any particular time constraint to this?" I ask.

"No. If the body has been properly preserved we may perform the rebirth at any time."

"Then if you'll pardon my candor, give me your list and get the phekkoff my ship."

He recoils at my reaction. "Mmm, perhaps I should come back another time."

"Per-maybe-haps, I'm thinking," Warragul says, folding his arms and fixing him with a belligerent look.

"You should control your underlings better, Admiral Tuvok. Captain," he says by way of farewell and leaves.

"I hope the lying ye'phekk maktal kosst amojan has a transporter accident on his way back," Security Officer Chan mutters behind me. "Pardon my language, sir."

"Captain, I believe you have set a bad precedent," Tuvok comments.

"Admiral, may I speak frankly?"

"I will probably regret granting you permission."

"Okay, let me put it this way. I have had four hours of sleep in the last two days. This is the first meal I've had in that time that didn't come out of an MRE package. I spent those two days wallowing in filth while we were trapped down there trying to take out Vaad transporter scramblers with no air support, no armor, and nothing but M-104 mortars for artillery. My crew have had it roughly the same. And then we find out that the graverobbers provoked that fight when they started using living Vaad soldiers for reproductive stock. So you'll forgive me if I'm not feeling particularly charitable when that overweight armchair general wants to turn my crew into more like him. And that's before we get to the religious insults!"

Tuvok ponders for a long moment. "I do not disagree on any particular point, Captain," he finally says. "But Kobali culture does consider it a great honor to be specifically selected rather than merely scavenged."

"Yes, and my species' dominant culture considers it honorable to attack unarmed passenger liners from cloak," Lieutenant K'lak retorts. The big, mustachioed Klingon sniper is unscathed but his spotter-slash-girlfriend Kate McMillan is still in surgery. Poor girl was already under the knife once for a prosthetic leg after the Utopia Planitia raid last year, now she's getting a new liver and left arm.

"Why do we even need the Kobali?" Warragul asks. "Especially since we can't trust them to tell the whole story."

"It is not a question of need. The Kobali have agreed to be our allies against the Vaadwaur and will remain so until such time as the Delta Alliance Security Council votes to eject them."

"Admiral, at this point I'd take the Kazon over the Kobali. At least with the Kazon you know where you stand."

"Yeah, on top of their graves," I hear Tess yell from across the room.

I take a look at the PADD the general handed me, with the list of bodies they want to turn into Kobali. Right at the top, Senior Chief Security Officer Athezra Darrod.

Naturally.

The other two names from my ship are easy 'no's. Petty Officer Simonds specified cremation in his will, and Lieutenant sh'Tavaharthral's bondgroup wants her body sent back to Andoria. As luck would have it, the only name on the list I actually knew is the one the Kobali are getting. And Tuvok's made it quite clear that whatever my personal feelings towards the Kobali, unless I can find some legal justification, they're getting him.

So I try to find some compelling reason to keep his body, besides my personal distaste for the zombies. I can't. Athezra's got no next-of-kin—only child, single, parents died ten years ago in a True Way bombing. I look at his file, hoping he left a will. No luck. I try his religion but he's a secular Foundation Reformist.

I relay this to my command crew at the meeting that evening. We're in Ten Forward instead of the wardroom since it took a hull breach during the fight.

Warragul's still fuming. "My mother's tribe, the Pintupi, used to abandon a place where somebody died. If I were running this operation we'd do exactly that. Vaads want Kobali Prime? They can have it."

"Not very Hippocratic of you, Doctor," Biri comments.

"Feh! Hang the bloody Hippocratic Oath—the Kobali have it coming after what they pulled."

"There is a legal reason we could use, Captain," Tess adds. "Unlike their wars with everyone else, the Vaads have a legitimate grievance with the Kobali. That opens the door for us to invoke the Prime Directive."

I shake my head. "Brass'll never go for it. Besides, you think fighting them is hard now, what happens when they reverse-engineer the Kobali resurrection process?"

Tess sucks in a breath and winces. "Ouch, good point."

I look over at the hulking, horned shape of my security chief. "You haven't weighed in yet, Dul'krah. He was your subordinate. What do you think?"

He leans forward and rests his arms on the table for a long moment, fingers folded. Finally he says, "I have no objection to allowing the Kobali to have Darrod, Clan Athezra."

"Why not?" Gaarra asks.

"He no longer has a use for his body." He pauses. "The body is merely a shell. My people believe the spirit survives the body to rejoin with the universe. We process our dead into water and fertilizer." My eyes widen at that and Biri's mouth drops open. "Recall that we live aboard asteroid habitats, Captain. I view the Kobali reuse of the dead as little different. Better, perhaps, since our dead will bring joy to others rather than mere sustenance."

"'One man's trash', sir?" Warragul quotes from somewhere in a sardonic tone.

"A similar concept," the Pe'khdar answers in a serious tone, "if I am recalling the correct idiom."

"So, you think we should do this?" Bynam asks him.

"Yes. Provided," he adds, holding up a finger, "that we ensure General Q'Nel comes nowhere near the person Senior Chief Athezra will become. He must be protected from that schro'jdrogkh'dokldirkh. That is a matter of Ship-Clan honor."

I flash on something mentioned in the briefing materials. "Come to think of it…" I tap a finger on my combadge. "Captain to Comms Officer."

"Ensign Esplin here."

"Ensign, get me Voyager, please. I need to speak to the admiral."

I'm told Athezra didn't remember much when he awoke. The Kobali doctor who did the procedure says it's to be expected—the brain damage from oxygen deprivation can be corrected but he won't get the memories back—and actually preferable: It's easier to transition from one's former life, thekyn'steya as the zombies call it, if you can't remember it to begin with.

Doesn't make it any easier on me.

The transporter pad hums and a slender Kobali female with enough crow's feet to make her maybe late forties if she was still a pure human materializes on the pad. "Captain Kanril Eleya, I presume?"

I nod. "Armaments Minister Jhet'leya. Thank you for agreeing to meet me."

She grimaces. "Captain, call me Lyndsay Ballard, please. I've missed it."

"All right, Ballard it is. Thank you for agreeing to take him."

She smiles. "He'll be the third chala'shor my mate and I have adopted. And I'll take any chance to screw over that overranked bean-counter Q'Nel."

I snort. "You and me both, ma'am."

The door behind me slides open and… There's really nothing you can compare it to. It is beyond creepy standing before a man who died in front of me less than forty-eight hours ago. But the sandy-haired senior chief, still recognizably Bajoran, is alive and breathing again. He looks me in the eye and I catch a flash of recognition in his eyes, but it's gone as quickly as it came. "Captain Kanril Eleya," he says by way of greeting.

I want to say his old name, but he's gone. "Q'Taal."

Ballard crosses the gap and puts a hand on Athezra's—Q'Taal's shoulder, giving him a motherly smile. "I'm Jhet'leya. I'm your tira'seya."

"Ballard, can I speak to you privately for a moment?"

"I thought you said your name was Jhet'leya," Ath—Q'Taal says, confused.

"Hold that thought. I'll explain everything soon." She comes over to me. "Yes?"

I take her aside and tell her very quietly, "I want to make one thing absolutely clear. If he recovers his memories and decides to rejoin us, I won't waste time trying to negotiate like Janeway did. I will personally blow any Kobali ship that pursues him clear back to the Celestial Temple if I have to; I don't give a flying phekk what the treaty says. He stays here of his own accord or not at all."

"Captain—"

"No, understand, after what your government pulled the word of a Kobali is worthless to me. I want your word as asworn officer of the Federation Starfleet that you'll respect his wishes."

She smiles. "Captain Kanril, if you've read my file, you know I was on the wrong side of that once. If he asks me about his kyn'steya, I'll tell him, and I'll let him make the choice."

"Good. Because otherwise the last thing you ever see will be a Galaxy-class starship." I turn to the blond man in black clothing and reach out to shake hands. "It was good to meet you, Q'Taal. May the Prophets be with you both."

I can't watch as she beams out, taking with her the last remnant of a man who saved my life twice. It's worse than watching him die. Gaarra's waiting for me outside and pulls me tight to his chest, and I find I can't stop the tears.

Author's Notes: Before anyone says anything, yes, of course I know the US didn't fight the Russians in WWII. That's Eleya's mistake, not mine.

I thought it was important for this that it wasn't some random redshirt we never met before who bit the big one, but I also didn't want to kill off a main character. So I used one of my recurring Mauve Shirts.

As for the tanks? I know we never see Starfleet using anything but light infantry and a dune buggy in the canon, but that's mostly a budget thing. Realistically no matter what technical advances you make in warfare, you're going to need some form of heavy armor support to take on dug-in enemies with prepared defenses. As for why I picked tanks specifically, tracked tanks are far more practical than either a spider tank like the Vaads use, or two-legged mecha like the Voth "exosuits". The legs alone would be ridiculously maintenance-intensive, and the mecha's top-heavy and has a bigger cross-section (it's easier to hit). So I came up with something that was sort of the bastard offspring of an M1 Abrams or T-90 and a Leman Russ from Warhammer 40,000, with appropriate modifications considering commonTrek tech.